"She has written a grant to secure just the right books for the classrooms, led tech bites during staff meetings and is emerging as a one of our teacher leaders at Lakeland," said Dancer.

During the superintendent's report Tina Kerr mentioned the United We Read day that was part of the national March is Reading Month initiative. She explained that the local United Way office wanted to expand the district's concept of volunteers reading in classrooms.

United We Read saw 174 readers volunteer to read to elementary classes across Branch County. All but two classrooms in Branch County and Union City schools had volunteer readers during the one-day event.

Also discussed was a recently-completed administrative retreat. TMembers spent a whole day together talking about how to make sure an Academics First plan can be initiated.

Eighty people attended the recentparent advisory committee meeting, where they were discussing the Acadamics First plan. Kerr said the conversation was positive.

When speaking about the Michigan House of Representatives passing the Education Achievement Authority Bill Kerr said, "I am personally disappointed because we spent a lot of time with the state and our representative trying to make sure that this legislation, which is bad to start off with, did not continue to grow."

The Michigan Association of School Administrators has asked for a select few superintendents to serve on the State Systemic Reform Committee. The selection was an election process through MASA. Kerr has been asked to join the committee with 22 other superintendents.

"We need to be proactive in changing education versus continuing to have our legislators mandate changes," said Kerr.

The school board adopted the amendments to Section 9000 General Public and Organizational Relations policies and others.

The school board accepted a bid from Michigan State Electrical for $343,897 for lighting on the football, baseball and soccer fields.

"We had some local bidders on this program. We discussed this at length, because obviously we have favoritism toward our local business," said James Hiscock. "The differences between the low bid and what they are proposing to do and our local bid was too great to give in."

Kerr reminded everyone that the money for this project came from the sinking fund, not the general fund.The board adopted the 2013-14 school calendar, keeping the same format as last year. There will be 187 teacher days and 180 student days.

Part of the Academics First inactive restructuring concerned how to utilize Lincoln Elementary school. The English Language Learners program has outlined a plan for the next year to service E.L.L.

Page 2 of 2 - students. It is in their best interests to have a home school so they can be immersed in the English language as well as getting help and support at Lincoln.

Lincoln will operate in its current capacity as far as housing Great Start and Head Start.

To make sure employees have as much notice as possible the board approved a plan to lay off para-pros that are grant-funded based on Title I and at-risk, depending on where their positions were. The reason for the lay-off was reduction in grant funding over and above what was anticipated.

The school district will be laying off para-pros that are associated with those grant funds. There is still a need for recess and lunch room para-pros. There will be fewer Title I funds available because of the sequester, and there won't be carry-over funds.

The district was told to expect only 85 percent of standard allocation funds, a significant reduction in Title I funds.